From: jamesoberg@aol.com (JamesOberg)
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy
Date: 13 Dec 2000 14:06:37 GMT
Subject: Re: ISS preventing missile profileration (was Re: ISS program on the
Discovery Channel)
Two points need to be made, again and again until they sink in past the miasma
of pretense that characterizes what passes for "space policy" in the Clinton
administration.
1. Rogue states don't need thousands of Russian renegade rocket scientists for
their own rocket programs. Hiring half a dozen specialists now and then for
specific problems is more than enough. And there always have been more than
enough for all such states to hire ALL they need. Some of them have been
interviewed at Moscow airports on their way to Iran and other places, and the
salaries they describe ($240 month) are so low it proves that interdiction is a
total failure (as with the street price of drugs in the US). Once and awhile,
exported rocket parts from scrapped Russian ICBMs are also discovered, and that
rate of capture also probably matches the rate of drug capture entering the US
-- that is, maybe 2-to-5 %.
2. US gummint policy may have started as a noble goal, but degenerated into a
vain hope and has become a dangerous delusion. People who still give this
rationale for the US/Russian space partnership are no longer just fools, some
of them are liars. The example which started this thread is proof of THAT. The
"India Rocket Deal" is another example of stupidity -- the Indians wanted to
build cryogenic upper stages for a GEO satellite launcher, and contracted with
Russia for the manufacturing technology as well as engines. Russia was still
permitted to sell them the engines, but some policy wonk in DC thought that
cryogenic engines would allow India to make a nuclear strike on Madrid -- even
though NO country anywhere else in the world uses cryogenic fuels in military
missiles, and even though India had all the rocket power it needed to drop
nukes on the only country it wanted to, next door.